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Bradford Banta

American football player

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 27, 2026
Entity authorityQ4954595 ↗
Source-derived summary

Bradford Banta (born December 14, 1970) is an American former professional football player and coach. He played tight end and long snapper in the National Football League (NFL) from 1994 to 2004. Banta also coached in the NFL from 2008 to 2018. He was an assistant coach for the Michigan Wolverines from 2019 to 2023, winning a national championship in his final season. Banta played college football for the USC Trojans.

College career

At the University of Southern California, Banta was a two-year starter at tight end for Trojans (1989–93), as well as a four-time letter-winner. He earned honorable mention All-Pac-10 Conference honors as a junior and senior and received his bachelor's degree in communications with a minor in sociology in 1993.

Professional career

Banta was selected in the fourth round of the 1994 NFL draft, 106 overall, by the Indianapolis Colts. He went on and played from 1994 to 2004 for the Indianapolis Colts, the New York Jets, the Detroit Lions, and the Buffalo Bills. He is noted for committing two unnecessary roughness penalties in a Monday Night Football matchup against the Miami Dolphins in 2000.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Bradford Banta” as american football player. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Bradford, Banta and American.

Editorial reviewA useful biographical orientation record, particularly for establishing names, roles and a first chronology. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1970, 1994, 2004, 2008—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1970-12-14. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Bradford, Banta and American providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Bradford Banta”, the useful work is to connect “american football player” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4954595. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1970, 1994, 2004 and 2008.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Bradford Banta”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Bradford Banta primary sources, Bradford Banta archive and Bradford research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Bradford Banta”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Bradford Banta” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.